


Another Soldier's Bones

by PresquePommes



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-14
Updated: 2014-07-14
Packaged: 2018-02-08 19:13:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1952829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PresquePommes/pseuds/PresquePommes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When everything is over, losses never dealt with seem to become new all over again. Death is a fact that cannot be ignored forever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Another Soldier's Bones

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kalashnikov](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalashnikov/gifts).



> Probably going to write more. We'll see.

After the world was retaken, it seemed like there was still so much to do that it would never end, not before their lives did, and that was what he, more than any of them, had been counting on, even if he hadn’t realized it.

There were citizens both grateful and skeptical to greet, to soothe and be thanked by.

There were ceremonies to attend, for who else could honour the fallen and remember they who fell.

There was paperwork and politics and polite nods to friends grown distant and foes grown civil.

And then, one day, there was nothing.

The first day Jean woke up without an itinerary, he felt free.

The war was over, both in its immediate reality and in its public aftermath. There was nothing more to do but to be a veteran and a hero and a survivor- and to move on.

The first day, Jean enjoyed the privileges afforded him by his position. He accepted the gift of and cooked himself a generous amount of meat, and he gave the remainder to his poorer neighbours, too pragmatic to fail in recognizing that the unprecedented bounty of the coming fall harvest wouldn’t affect the markets until fall.

The second day, Jean smiled at the merchant’s daughter, and knew from her giggling and her father’s sudden friendliness that he could be comfortably married before Christmas if he felt so inclined. In the evening, he cooked, and he gave.

The third day, Jean cooked again, and again, gave his excess to the wan-faced boy next door, relishing the smile that lifted the too-old horror from his eyes.

The fourth day, again he cooked, and again he gave, but in less abundance, for he’d had the merchant and his daughter to dinner, and both of them ate like citizens, not like soldiers. The child’s smile was no less radiant for the lesser portion he was given, but the absences visible in the edges of the box weighed heavy on Jean’s heart.

On the fifth, he refused an offer to come to dinner, for he saw the wan-faced boy and his sister playing in the street, and he did not want them to go hungry so he could be entertained by company that made him uneasy when he watched it eat more than was necessary- company that took more than it gave.

On the sixth day, the daughter was wary but hopeful, but the father was cold. Nonetheless, Jean paid for his luxuries and cooked them and gave, for he felt better for being smiled at for giving without pretense than he did for being smiled at for taking what he had already decided he did not want.

On the seventh day, and the eighth, and the ninth, and the tenth, and the eleventh, Jean cooked, and Jean gave.

On the twelfth day, he found himself staring at the fresh blue bruise on a still-gaunt boy’s face. The boy’s instant smile when he saw him did not disguise the freshness of his bruise- if nothing else, his slightly wince highlighted it.

Jean squatted in front of him.

“What happened to you?” he asked, forgoing politeness and tucking the box he was carrying under his arm as the child’s eyes darted to it uncertainly.

The boy shifted, smile wavering nervously. “Kicked by a horse,” he lied, for Jean knew he was lying- his family did not own horses, and a horse kick was distinctive, nonetheless.

This was not a horse kick- this was a punch. Bare knuckles, not iron shoes, had done this.

Jean considered pushing further, but once he offered the box, the boy took it and ran without looking back.

Jean thought about his sister, and then, about the other children he’d seen lingering nearby, and about the parents he’d only assumed existed.

He did not see the boy after that, but he began leaving the boxes on the boy’s front step, making a habit of polishing his gear on his porch and greeting the stony-eyed youths he saw glancing towards it. He knew the boy, or at least his sister, was safe only because the boxes would disappear through the doorway, snatched up by small, skinny hands.

On the twentieth day, Jean caught himself thinking far too much and moving far too little.

He had become aware that he hadn’t seen any of his old friends and comrades for the better part of a month.

He missed their faces, missed the companionship, missed looking at another person’s haunted features and knowing he was not wholly alone in his quiet suffering, but he did not want to see anyone he could hope to see.

When he thought, not too long, not too hard, about the face he wanted to see smiling at him, he thought about dark eyes and dark hair and freckles, an endless expense of freckles, light brown and dark brown, some of them pale like freshly tanned leather, barely darker than the skin they littered.

There was a balance there he missed- a wisdom, a sweetness, and an innocence the rest of him had lost.

“Marco,” he mumbled to himself, stricken with strange guilt because, just for a moment, he’d forgotten his name.

The small shard of bone he’d carried with him since the cremation had never strayed too far from his person, but the name- there was an importance to his name.

The dead whose graves did not bear markers bore instead their names like lordly titles and lofty holdings- without them, they were nothing, just more bones buried in another mass grave.

“Marco,” he murmured, trying to connect the name to the afterimage still burnt on the back of his eyes.

He wondered if he’d ever forget that smile. He missed the innocence they’d all left behind them in bits and pieces after Trost.

He missed Marco.

He wasn’t sure, at first, if it was a blessing or curse that he could still hear his voice ringing clearly in his ears when he thought about him in the dim quiet of the early morning.

On the thirtieth day, he realized it was both, but the knowing changed nothing at all, because the shard of bone he held could very well be another soldier’s bones, and he would never know the difference.

The thirty-first day, he cooked and he gave, but only after he’d given did he realize that he himself had forgotten to eat.


End file.
